7 Best Movies from Cambodia to Watch First

7 Essential Films from Cambodia

Ranked native cinema in Cambodia’s own creative voice.

1. 

   1. First They Killed My Father

   2017

   Based on a survivor's memoir, this drama follows a young girl torn from her comfortable Phnom Penh life when the Khmer Rouge seize power, enduring forced labor, separation, and the horrors of the regime through a child's eyes. Directed by Angelina Jolie.

2. 

   2. The Missing Picture

   L'image manquante · 2013

   Using hand-carved clay figures, archival film, and personal narration, filmmaker Rithy Panh reconstructs his own childhood under the Khmer Rouge and the atrocities of 1975 to 1979, filling in the images that history never recorded. A singular, deeply personal documentary.

3. 

   3. My Village at Sunset

   Mon village au coucher du soleil · 1992

   A young Cambodian doctor trained in Paris returns to volunteer at a clinic near Phnom Penh, where most of his patients are victims of landmines, and falls in love with a nurse. A humane drama directed by King Norodom Sihanouk himself.

4. 

   4. Rice People

   អ្នកស្រែ · 1994

   A poor farming family in the Cambodian countryside pins everything on a single season's rice crop, and when misfortune strikes, the household slowly begins to come apart. Rithy Panh's quietly powerful drama of rural life.

5. 

   5. White Building

   ប៊ូឌីញ ស · 2021

   As the crumbling Phnom Penh apartment block he has lived in all his life faces demolition, a twenty-year-old navigates the competing pressures of family, friends, and an uncertain future. A tender, melancholy coming-of-age drama.

6. 

   6. The Storm Makers

   2014

   This documentary lays bare modern-day slavery in Cambodia, following a young woman sold into forced labor abroad alongside the everyday lives of two human traffickers who feed the trade. A chilling exposé.

7. 

   7. In the Life of Music

   2018

   A young Cambodian-American woman visiting her relatives for the first time pieces together her family's history through a single beloved song that threads across generations from before, during, and after the Khmer Rouge years. A gentle musical drama.